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Is that all there is? Lawmakers pass probation probe

By Peter Lucas

Updated:
05/21/2013 08:07:10 AM EDT

Is that all there is?

That, sounding like the unforgettable Peggy Lee, was the reaction of Senate President Therese Murray (and others) to the non-indictment indictments by U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz in her two-year grand jury probe of lawmakers in the hiring scandal at the Probation Department.

Is that all there is? Peggy Lee sang in her moving ballad, a haunting tune that Terry Murray could have sung. (Google it.)

Is that all there is?

If that's all there is, my friends, then let's keep dancing,

Let's break out the booze and have a ball,

If that's all there is.

Nobody in the Massachusetts Legislature, as far as we know, broke out the booze or had a ball, or even danced. But they could have.

Everybody walked. Everybody except John J. O'Brien and his two deputies, that is. And they are not legislators. O'Brien is the former head of the Probation Department, who for years ran a patronage haven for legislators. He was reindicted on the strange charge that he bribed legislators by giving them jobs to hand out to unqualified constituents in exchange for his budget increases. But no legislators were indicted.

Historically, legislators and other elected officials get people jobs. The practice of helping a constituent, or someone who helped you, is called political patronage. It has been around since government was invented.

Ortiz's problem is that she had to prove that patronage is a crime.

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And to do so she had to prove that there were kickbacks, or payoffs, or bribes involved. Helping a constituent get a state job is not a crime -- although there are some zealots who would make it one. And despite occasional -- and increasingly rare -- lapses, blatant kickbacks for jobs do not happen very often.

If people want an example of what really constitutes bribery, they need only to read about the tens of millions of dollars in cash stuffed in bags and suitcases that the CIA handed over as bribes to Afghan President Hamid Karzai so he would allow us to save his country. And he is still throwing us out.

Despite the fact that Ortiz hauled more than 50 legislators before her grand jury, she did not come up with any alleged wrongdoing on the part of any of them. That is because the system of patronage does not work that way she was led to believe it works.

Helping a constituent get a state go job is still not a crime, no matter what the editorial writers at The Boston Globe may say. Ortiz's problem is that she bought into patronage abuse at the Probation Department as criminal activity exposed by the Globe in a series of stories.

The paper, which named her "Bostonian of the Year" in 2011 after she successfully prosecuted former House Speaker Sal DiMasi on unrelated corruption charges, led her into the investigation. But she went willingly along because, as she said, she was dealing with "the culture of corruption" on Beacon Hill.

Now, after a two-year investigation of the relationship of legislators with the Probation Department, Ortiz came up empty. And if you missed news of her indictment -- or non-indictment -- story, it is understandable. The indictment of O'Brien and his two deputies got lost in the middle of the massive coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing.

Lost in the story was the fact that, despite all the publicity and hoopla over Ortiz's investigation, she failed to find even one of the 200 members of the Legislature guilty of any wrongdoing in the hiring practices of the Probation Department.

She might have had better luck if she went after Karzai and the CIA.

It is tough to admit you were wrong, or that you were led astray. And Ortiz is not about to admit either.

Rather than state that she found no criminal wrongdoing among legislators, Ortiz in her indictment implied that both Murray and DeLeo were somehow tainted, even though they were not indicted. Ortiz blackened their names because O'Brien got jobs for people -- not the most qualified -- that they sponsored in order to "favorably influence" the two legislative leaders.

Yet Murray and DeLeo walked. Everybody walked.

Listen closely and you can hear Terry Murray, among others, singing at the next fundraiser.

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